by Anna Meriano
Leo remembered that story, even if she couldn’t remember it actually happening. It wasn’t hard to imagine her four-year-old self feeling like her older sisters had left her behind.
“Mamá would be so upset if she knew about this,” Isabel said. “You’re still so little, and these things can be dangerous, Leo.”
“I am not little.” Leo stuck her chin out and frowned. “I’m eleven and a half, and that’s big enough for everyone to stop treating me like a baby!”
Isabel slowly shook her head. “Mamá is going to kill me. . . .”
Leo felt her stomach twist into nervous knots as Isabel stared down at her. Isabel, who hated to make Mamá mad. Isabel, who was so proud of the responsibility Mamá and Daddy gave her.
It took one very long minute before Isabel smiled the same smile she used when she was offering to comb Leo’s hair. “Oh, don’t look so sick. I’m not a tattletale, no matter what you and Marisol think. But no more snooping, Leo. Enough.”
Leo hung her head. “But . . .”
“What?” Isabel looked down, straight into Leo’s best puppy-dog face. “Oh, Leo, no . . . you already figured too much out. I can’t tell you any more.”
Leo let her bottom lip poke out, hoping that Isabel could be convinced. “Please,” she said, “everyone’s lying to me. I just want to know the truth.”
“I really can’t . . . Mamá . . .” Isabel tugged on her earring, a sure sign that she was about to give in.
“I’m responsible,” Leo blurted. “Um, at least I can be more responsible. And I can learn Spanish. I can fix whatever I need to fix.”
“Leo,” Isabel looked ready to cry, “it isn’t something you did wrong. It’s just . . . we have a rule . . . Mamá would be . . . Oh, all right!” Isabel cracked. “I guess I can tell you. It can’t do any more damage, right?” She sighed, but a smile crept onto her face and she patted Leo’s shoulder. “Give me the book, little Leo, and I’ll show you something fun.”
Leo handed the book over and moved off the floor and into Daddy’s desk chair next to Isabel.
“The women in Mamá’s family have always been brujas.”
“Brujas?” Leo didn’t know the word.
“‘Bruja’ means witch.” Isabel pulled off small pieces of her cookie half and began popping them into her mouth. “But we’re not just any kind of witch. Brujería is practiced by lots of people in lots of different ways, and our special family power comes from the magic of sweetness; sweetness from love and sweetness from sugar. That’s why Mamá’s bisabuela started the bakery—she wanted to share love and sugar with everyone, with or without magic.” Isabel traced her finger over the spine of the recipe book. “She wrote down all her spells in this book, so that her daughters could follow them. Although . . .” Isabel shrugged. “We don’t use the book so much anymore. Mamá set me and Marisol to work typing some of them up on the computer. But every new spell that someone invents gets written down here, to make it official. Any woman in the family can add new recipes.”
Leo felt a rush of pride. She wanted to hold the book again and touch the words written by her great-great-grandmother, by her grandmother, maybe even by Mamá.
“Can I do magic too?” she asked. “I haven’t done any yet, I don’t think. Should I have done any yet? Do I have to make bread with ribbons?”
“Leo, slow down.” Isabel frowned. “You have the ability to do magic—we all do—but it’s normal that you haven’t noticed it yet. The signs don’t show until you’re older, and it takes practice.”
Leo stifled a groan. Everything always hinged on being older. “What signs?”
Isabel shook her head. “Go grab one of the small bags of flour and bring it here, will you?”
Isabel flipped to a page near the back of the book. Leo had one hundred million and seven questions that absolutely could not wait, but she suspected that the very top one on the list—Can I see some magic?—would be answered if she listened to Isabel, so she ran out of the office, pulled open the cupboard, and returned with a paper sack of all-purpose flour, one pound. She was finally getting an explanation, and Isabel had done something Mamá didn’t want her to. In this moment, anything might be possible.
“Thanks, little Leo.” Isabel kept smiling. “Now, this was the first spell I added to the book. It’s—it’s sort of silly, but I’ve always liked the small details, the decorations and frostings . . . you know.”
Leo nodded. She knew that Isabel loved to use the icing bags to pipe flowers around the edges of tres leches cake and write ¡Feliz Cumpleaños! or Felicidades in fancy script. She also knew that Isabel didn’t really think that this spell—whatever it was—was silly. It was special, precious, and Leo felt all the sweetness of her sister’s love in the offer to share it. She leaned over the book and read along with Isabel: Nieve de harina.
“Snow?” Leo asked.
“Flour snow,” Isabel translated. “Flour snowflakes, really. You’ll see.” She opened the bag of flour. She took a pinch of the white dust with her right hand and placed it in the palm of her left hand.
“Baking and magic have the same three parts,” she explained. “One: the ingredients. Always make sure your ingredients are the best you can get, so that your spells and your cakes are as strong and fresh and rich as possible. Two: the recipe or spell. The what and how and when and at what temperature—the more complicated the recipe, the more carefully you have to follow it. Three: the heart. You know you have to put your heart into baking, right? It’s the same with magic.”
Leo nodded, her heart knocking against her chest. Isabel’s words didn’t feel like strange magic; they were familiar advice. Mamá always encouraged her daughters to put their own spin on recipes, to trust their taste buds, and to add love to every mix. “It’s a recipe, not a rule book,” she had said once when Isabel was worrying over substituting brown sugar for white. Leo felt warmth spread from her stomach to her cheeks as excitement filled her. Isabel’s explanation felt like a perfectly solved math problem—Leo didn’t need to check her work to know that it made sense.
“This spell is easy in one way,” Isabel told Leo, “because it’s almost all heart. That means it’s good practice for tapping into your power, but it also means you can’t rely on the power of the recipe or the ingredients to create the magic for you. It’s good for beginners.” Isabel blew gently on the palm of her hand and sent the flour flying into the air. The powder clumped and grew, molding itself unnaturally until the air in front of Leo’s face was a flurry of flour snowflakes drifting lazily toward the ground, where they puffed back into normal dusty flour piles.
Leo laughed and stuck out her tongue to catch one of the snowflakes, which tasted almost like a gingersnap. “It’s magic,” she said. “That spicy smell. That taste. It’s the magic, isn’t it?”
Isabel nodded, smiling. Goose bumps prickled up Leo’s arms. This was magic, and Leo wanted more.
When all the snowflakes had puffed away, Isabel dusted off her hands and started to roll the bag of flour closed.
“Wait!” Leo threw up her hands, desperate not to let Isabel return to her normal rule-following self just yet. “You have to let me do it, Isabel. Can I do it? You have to teach me.”
Isabel hesitated, her hands frozen on the flour. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Isabel,” Leo begged, “please. It’s just a tiny spell, and I just want to see if I can do it. I just want to see if I really have magic.”
“It’s not a question of whether you have magic, Leo.” Isabel sighed. “It’s that you aren’t ready to use it yet.” But her hands on the neck of the flour bag didn’t move. Leo waited.
“Okay,” Isabel said after a long pause. “Here’s the deal. I know how exciting the magic can be, and I hate when Mamá makes me wait to learn new things, and I don’t want to do that to you. But if I trust you, you have to promise to use your good judgment, okay?”
Leo nodded so hard her neck popped.
Isabel sighed
. “Mamá is going to kill me,” she said again. “But what am I supposed to do? Say no to that pitiful face?” She unrolled the bag, reached in for a pinch of flour, and placed it in Leo’s outstretched palm. “I hope you appreciate how much we spoil you, baby of the family.”
“I do,” Leo said.
“You can try the spell, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t get it on your first try. You’re still young, and it’s hard to learn how to get hold of the magic. It takes patience.”
Patience had never been Leo’s strong point. She immediately blew on her palm and coughed as the flour rose in a cloud and choked her. Isabel covered her mouth, but her eyes betrayed her amusement. Leo frowned.
“Why can’t I do it?” she asked, her voice small. A louder voice inside her head, the voice that whispered mean things about her hair and convinced her to stay quiet around strangers, spoke up: You probably don’t have magic. Maybe every woman in Mamá’s family carried magic powers except for Leo. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Isabel explained. “Except that you’re eleven. We start training at fifteen. That’s when Mamá will tell you all the history, and you’ll be initiated into the family magic, and—”
“Like Alma and Belén!” Leo interrupted. “With the candles and the dresses and the dough. But they’re only fourteen still.”
“Leonora, how do you know about that?” Isabel looked shocked, and Leo shoved the last bit of her cookie into her mouth to hide her guilt. “No.” Isabel shook her head. “Please don’t answer, actually. I’m sure I don’t want to know. Yes, we initiated Alma and Belén a bit early. It’s just that Tía Paloma tires out so quickly, and Mamá didn’t want to force her to run the tent by herself for another year. . . .”
“The tent for talking to dead people.” Leo took another pinch of flour and blew on her hand again, trying to imagine adding the spicy cinnamon smell to her breath. No snowflakes.
Isabel nodded. “Messages,” she said. “Just short ones, usually. The twins have the power to channel the dead, but it drains them. They’re lucky to share the gift.”
Leo nodded, her heart pounding. Her sisters were possessed, but not by evil spirits like the movie. They were possessed by dead people, by Mrs. Gomez’s dead husband, by any other visitor from the other side. It sounded scary. But, Leo thought, Day of the Dead was invented as a way to talk to people who have passed away, to remember them and show them that you still loved them. If messages helped people do that, they couldn’t be so scary.
Leo looked at the flour she had spilled on the floor, disenchanted. She bit her lower lip and tried not to show her disappointment. “Why—”
“Don’t worry,” Isabel said softly. “I told you, no one gets a spell right on their first try, especially before they turn fifteen.” She cupped her hand over Leo’s, hiding the flour. “Just forget about the magic for now, and you can try again in a few years. At least now you know, right?”
Leo shrugged. She didn’t want to wait until she was fifteen. If Alma and Belén could be initiated early, then she could be too. She would just have to prove to Mamá how talented she was, and how much help she could be.
“Can I see you do it?” Leo asked. “Just one more time?”
Isabel smiled, waved toward the dusting of flour on the ground, and held out her cupped hands to catch the resulting storm of snowflakes. They danced upward through the air like someone had hit rewind on winter. When it was finished, the floor was clean and Isabel held a bit of flour, which she carefully brushed into the trash can under the desk.
“You did it different!” How could she learn if her sister was going to change the rules from moment to moment? “You didn’t blow on it.”
“I told you—this spell isn’t about having a strict recipe.” Isabel laughed. “It’s about the feeling. Don’t worry; you’ll understand someday.”
Leo frowned and reached for one more pinch of flour. “Someday” didn’t interest her. She had tried thinking about magic, scrunching her forehead and puffing her chest, as if she had some previously undiscovered magic muscle she could flex. Now, instead, she focused on the flour in her palm and thought about snow.
Leo had seen snow only once, four Christmases ago when Rose Hill had suffered through an unusually cold winter. On Christmas Eve, after Mamá had bundled Leo into her warmest red jacket and piled everyone into her minivan for midnight mass, Leo sat in the pew snug between Daddy and Mamá and fell asleep to the voices of her family and neighbors singing verses of “Silent Night” in English, Spanish, and German. She barely stirred when Daddy carried her out to the truck, or when he tucked her into the seat between Isabel and Marisol. But on the way home, Isabel shook Leo’s shoulder and Alma and Belén and even Marisol oohed and aahed because the freezing night had really frozen, and small white dots sprinkled the windshield.
When they pulled into the driveway, everyone got out of the car and stood in the front yard, heads tilted, arms outstretched. Mamá called it un milagro—a Christmas miracle. Daddy scooped up the thin layer of snow that was sticking on the roof of his truck and made a snowball that hit Mamá when Marisol ducked. Alma and Belén crouched to watch the snowflakes melt as they hit the sidewalk. Isabel hummed Christmas carols and smiled and waved at the neighbors, who were also outside, some in robes and slippers, some still in church dresses and ties. And Leo stared up at the sky and watched the flakes dance like lazy shooting stars.
It was a sweet memory and a snowy memory, and Leo held on to it as she closed her eyes and blew on the flour in her palm. Her breath felt cold against her skin. She opened her eyes and breathed in the smell of flour dust and the tiniest hint of spicy magic.
“Oh, Leo, that’s wonderful.” Isabel clapped her hands as the small snowstorm whirled and disappeared. “See? You have nothing to worry about. In a few years you’ll start training with Mamá and you’ll learn to use recipe spells and—oh!” Isabel pulled Leo into a hug. “You’re growing up so fast, little Leo. Go enjoy the festival now, won’t you? The magic will wait. Besides, I have work to do.”
Leo nodded, her throat suddenly tight. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thanks, Isabel.”
“What are big sisters for?” Isabel stood, wiped her hand over Mamá’s desk to make sure no flour was left on it, and put the spell book back on the shelf where Leo had found it. “But Leo, try to be patient, now. Remember, best judgment.” She rolled the top of the flour bag closed and took it with her back into the kitchen and out through the blue swinging doors to the front of the bakery.
With the rule-breaking Isabel fading away, Leo knew she had to act now if she wanted to learn more about magic. She loved her sister, but she couldn’t stop after one puny snowflake spell. Moving fast to avoid suspicion, Leo darted to the bookshelf and pulled out the biggest hardcover cookbook she could find. Make Cakes Like the Greats! She pulled the glossy paper dust jacket off the book and wrapped it over the spell book. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but Leo thought that if she tucked the book under her arm, no one would notice the creases. She peeked out from between the blue doors, made sure to wait until Isabel had her head buried in the display case reaching for a special pink cookie, and then ran. Out from behind the counter, through the line of people, out the front door, and into the bustling street.
Mr. García played his guitar for a small audience and sang requests for old songs and love songs and songs for the dead. Mamá and Daddy sang along as they passed out thin sample slices of pan dulce to anyone who walked by their table. Leo squeezed the magic book between her elbow and her ribs, hoping her skull face paint masked her guilty nervousness.
“Can I have the keys?” she asked Daddy when his hands were full making change. “I want to leave my book in the car.”
Without even looking up, Daddy pulled the truck keys out of his apron pocket and dropped them onto the table. “Go play some games, mija,” he said while smiling at a customer.
Leo nodded, grabbed the keys, and walked away as fast as she could wit
hout looking too suspicious. She left the book of spells in the cab of Daddy’s truck, tucked under the backseat so no one could look in and see it.
Only then did she return to the festival and go looking for Caroline.
CHAPTER 8
BREAD AND ALTARS
Leo raced around the festival trying to track down her friend. She wandered down the block, passing a ring-toss game and the aguas frescas stall. She zipped past papier-mâché skeletons and masks and dodged a group of teenagers throwing sugar skulls at each other.
She searched for Caroline’s ponytail and finally caught sight of her friend standing next to her dad by the breakfast tacos.
“Caroline!” Leo called.
“Leo, hi!” Caroline smiled hugely, waved with a colored paper skeleton, and left her dad to meet Leo across the street. She wore a crown of yellow-orange paper flowers, but her face was unpainted and her T-shirt was plain green. “Wow,” she said. “Love the face paint.”
“Thanks. Have you tried any of my mom’s pan dulce?”
“Not yet. My dad and I just got here.”
“But I have eaten three.” Brent Bayman appeared behind Caroline and stepped right into their conversation. In one hand he held one of the bakery’s plastic bags, and with the other he stuffed half a pan de muerto into his mouth.
Caroline rolled her eyes and laughed.
“Hey,” he said with a nod at Leo. His throat bulged as he swallowed, and then he smiled. “These things are really good.” The second half of the pan de muerto disappeared into his mouth. “Rully goo,” he repeated, spraying crumbs across the sidewalk.
“Excuse you.” Caroline looked down at her friend and shook her head. “No manners,” she whispered to Leo, grinning.
“I got you one.” Brent held out the bag to Caroline. “Sorry, Leo, I didn’t get you any. But you can get them for free, probably, right?” He watched with hungry eyes as Caroline ripped off a small bite of her roll and then a bigger chunk. Finally Caroline broke off a chunk and offered it to him, rolling her eyes. “You are a bottomless pit.”
